Refunds and cancellations

By the end of this guide, you'll know how to issue a refund (full or partial) on any successful Stripe payment, what the booking looks like afterwards, what the guest gets, and how cancellation differs from refund.

What you can refund

Refunds work per-transaction, not per-booking. A booking with multiple successful payments (e.g. deposit + balance, or two retries) shows a refund icon on each successful row independently.

Step 1: Open the booking and find the payment

Sidebar → Bookings → click the booking → scroll to the Payments section.

Find the row you want to refund — it's an Online row with a green Succeeded badge. On the right of that row is a small hand-coins icon. Click it.

If you don't see the icon: the row isn't Succeeded, or it's already been fully refunded. Pending/failed rows show a Delete icon instead.

Step 2: Enter the amount

A modal opens titled Refund payment with the Amount field prefilled to the maximum refundable.

• Full refund — leave the prefilled amount, click Refund now.
• Partial refund — type a smaller number. Stripe accepts down to 0.01 of your currency. The remaining amount stays refundable; you can issue another partial refund later from the same row.

The amount is always validated server-side: even if you change it via DevTools, the server rejects anything above what's actually refundable.

Click Refund now. The button doesn't refund yet — it triggers the next step.

Step 3: Enter the confirmation code

The modal switches to a code-input view: "We sent a 6-digit confirmation code to j\\\@yourdomain.com*. Enter it below to authorise the refund."

Open the email inbox for the address shown (the one you log into cabintale with). The email subject is "Confirm refund" with sender Cabintale. Inside, a big monospaced 6-digit number — copy it.

Back in the modal, type the 6 digits. Click Confirm refund.

The code is valid for 10 minutes. After 5 wrong tries the code is invalidated and you have to start over (click Back, then Refund now again). This is intentional — it's the security layer that protects you if your admin session is compromised.

If the email never arrives:

• Check spam (some inbox providers tag the first transactional email)
• Make sure you're logged in with the right email address (the code is always sent to your cabintale account email, not the guest's)
• Wait up to 30 seconds — Postmark delivery is usually instant but can occasionally lag

Step 4: What happens after

Stripe processes the refund. Within a couple seconds, the booking detail re-renders:

• A new row appears in the Payments table — Refund type, negative amount (-2900 CZK), Refunded status badge
• The original payment row keeps its Succeeded badge — the original transaction still happened. Refunds are tracked separately for clean audit history
• The summary row at the bottom (To be paid) recalculates: total minus net paid (gross paid minus succeeded refunds)
• If the refund covers everything paid online, the booking's overall status drops from Paid back to Confirmed and the Payment link button reappears

Stripe also sends the guest its own refund-issued email automatically (with the receipt). Cabintale doesn't send a separate refund email — Stripe's wording is more accurate to what the guest's bank actually shows.

Multiple partial refunds

You can refund a transaction multiple times until the original amount is exhausted:

Each refund triggers its own confirmation-code email and creates its own row in the Payments table.

When the row is fully refunded the icon disappears.

Refunds initiated from the Stripe Dashboard

If you issue a refund directly from dashboard.stripe.com (or Stripe support does it for you), cabintale picks it up via webhook within seconds and adds the row to the Payments table — same as if you'd done it in cabintale. No email confirmation in that direction (Stripe's own dashboard auth gates it).

Cancelling a booking vs. refunding a payment

Refund and cancellation are separate actions in cabintale, on purpose.

Common workflow:

1. Guest emails: "I have to cancel."
2. You refund the payment (this guide)
3. You then cancel the booking (Sidebar → Bookings → row dropdown → Delete) so the dates reopen

Doing them in this order means the guest sees the money come back first, then the booking disappears. If you cancel without refunding, the dates open up but the money stays in your Stripe — fix it with a refund afterwards.

Heads up. A "Cancel booking" UI with optional refund-on-cancel is on the roadmap. Until then, the two actions are manual and independent.

What the guest sees

• From Stripe — an automatic refund-issued email with the original receipt and the new refund line. Sent in the same language the guest used at checkout.
• From cabintale — nothing automatic. If you want to add context ("we'll see you next year", "here's what happened"), reply to the booking-confirmation email thread or write to the guest directly.

The refunded amount typically appears on the guest's card statement within 5–10 business days. Stripe shows it as a negative line item; some banks render it as a separate credit transaction. If a guest asks where the money is, point them to their card statement first; only then check the Refunds tab in your Stripe Dashboard.

Troubleshooting

Related guides

• Accept payments on a property — Accept payments on a property
• Payment gateways (account-level setup) — Payment gateways
• Stripe setup — Stripe setup